Spider-Man (1981): Before Watching

It's hard to sum up my feelings regarding going into the 1981 Spider-Man series, but overall, I'd have to say that I'm cautiously optimistic. It feels like when people think of the Spider-Man cartoon of the 1980s, their minds immediately jump to Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, the show which comes after this (and which, rest assured, I will be viewing after this). Why exactly is that? Is this show bad, or mediocre, in comparison? Was it unpopular, and necessitated a retool into Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends to maintain viewer interest? Certainly Amazing Friends does feature Iceman and Firestar which gives it an identity of its own, but that doesn't mean that this series is necessarily going to be bad.

It's been over a decade by this point since Spider-Man last had a cartoon of his own. In the time in-between, he's gotten two new comic series, failed to save Gwen Stacy, been cloned, proposed to Mary Jane, confronted the burglar who killed Uncle Ben, and much more beyond that. How much of this is going to make it into the show? The 1967 show surprised me with how often it adapted comic issues, including ones which were pretty recent at the time. By now, is Spider-Man enough of a pop-culture juggernaut that a cartoon can't afford to alienate viewers by introducing some of the, shall we say, more out-there concepts of the later episodes of the 1967 series?

Viewing the opening, it's too early to tell. There's a funky synthesiser which lands us strongly in the zeitgeist of the 1980s, accompanied by a sequence of Spider-Man action presumably cut from the upcoming episodes. It's nice to see the Green Goblin, as confirmation that we'll get at least one Spider-Man villain, but more surprisingly, Doctor Doom of all villains is the most prominent villain in the opening. Is he going to be an overarching foe for this series, or was he chosen because he fit into the opening well? (Or was he iconic enough to be recognisable to a casual audience by this point?) I guess we'll find out soon.

Join me next time as I start my journey into the first Spider-Man cartoon of the 1980s, with "Bubble, Bubble, Oil and Trouble". I'll be looking forwards to hearing your thoughts as I go.